Interview: Steve Vai - The Gospel According to Steve

Steve Vai first gained notoriety nearly
three decades ago when he joined forces
with David Lee Roth after the famous
frontman’s split with Van Halen. Almost
immediately, Vai usurped Eddie Van
Halen’s throne as the king of rock guitar,
and throughout the subsequent decades
Vai’s continual innovations have distinctly
changed the sound of rock guitar. What has
always significantly differentiated Vai from
other virtuosi in the annals of rock history
is that, although he can burn with reckless
abandon and fire, he’s also an academic at
heart—a passionate player whose mastery of
music theory, composition, and orchestration
could rival a Julliard professor. While
still in high school, Vai wrote his first
orchestral piece, an arrangement he called
“Sweet Wind from Orange County.” Soon
after, he landed a gig with Frank Zappa
by sending him a transcription of Zappa’s
impossibly difficult piece “The Black Page.”

But even after decades of reigning as
one of the world’s most formidable guitar
icons, Vai continues to hone his skills as
a modern classical composer. In fact, he
doesn’t even need a guitar to satiate his
musical urges. In some cases, a pencil and
manuscript paper are all the man needs.
Releases such as 2004’s Piano Reductions
Vol. 1 feature strictly piano arrangements of
Vai’s compositions (performed by frequent
collaborator Mike Keneally), and just this
past November Vai premiered an orchestral
composition sans guitar entitled “The
Middle of Everywhere” that was performed
by the Noord Nederlands Orkest (North
Netherlands Orchestra). Of course, he has
also indulged his inner guitar geek by not
only writing for but also performing live
with the Metropole Orchestra on releases
like 2007’s double-live album Sound
Theories Vol. I & II.

For a lot of guitarists, an album like
Sound Theories would be their magnum
opus—after all, how do you top something
as grand as writing for and performing
with a symphony orchestra? But not for
Vai. His latest release, The Story of Light, is
the second installment of a rock-opera trilogy
that began with 2005’s Real Illusions:
Reflections. As you’d expect, Story of Light is
much more than just an instrumental shred
fest—it features Vai’s trademark genre-busting
arrangements and an unlikely cast
of guests, ranging from a gospel choir to
vocalists Aimee Mann and (The Voice finalist)
Beverly McClellan.

We caught up with Vai to talk about his
latest epic, his take on the new Van Halen
album, and whether he’d still be content
if he were just a mailman rather than a
guitar hero.

What’s the concept behind Story of Light?
It’s sort of like a rock opera. I hate using
that term, because I don’t like opera at all,
but basically it’s the second installment of
the Real Illusions trilogy. My plan was to do
this story, and then at the end I would take
all of these records and kind of amalgamate
them into the story—and then, maybe,
the songs would be put in proper order and
there would be new stuff.

If somebody picked up Story of Light before
Real Illusions, would the context be lost?
They’re not in a sequential, chronological,
linear order. It’s not the kind of record
where you have to follow the concept and
know the story in order to enjoy the music.
I wanted it, first and foremost, to be enjoyable
music. Then if you read deeper into it,
each song tells a little piece of the story.

The Story of Light spans a variety of
styles. Does having such a broad range
make it harder to unify things across
the three albums?
What I’m setting out to do is just do what I
really like to hear in music, which is to create
diversity—but with unique dimensions to it.
“Creamsicle Sunset,” for instance, is a clean
guitar sound and a simple piece of music.
Then you listen to something like “The Book
of the Seven Seals,” which is like “contrast”
with a capital C. A lot of people are comfortable
making records that have a musical
theme that’s in every single song. It’s like,
“Okay, this is our 7th string and we’re tuning
down and we’ve got a lot of distortion. We’re
going to do some soft parts now and then …
but this is us.” You could listen to song number
one and song number 10, and it would
sound like the same band. That’s what a lot
of people do, and that’s great, but there’s no
rule that you have to do that. The only time
people believe you have to do that is when so
many other people do it that they think this
is the normal way to do things.

Inside Steve Vai's Harmony Hut home studio. Photo by Lindsey Best

“Creamsicle Sunset” starts off with the
simple opening triad and inversions, and
then morphs into some delicious dissonances
that most rock guitarists probably
couldn’t gracefully maneuver.
Yeah, a song like that was like a little gift for
me, because it was so simple. I picked up the
guitar and I was just playing these triads—like an exercise you do when you’re learning
chords—but this particular time I played it,
it transcended the exercise and it sounded
like music. The whole song unfolded to me
and all I needed was that first bar—the triad
thing. When I came up with that idea, I had
my iPhone and I turned it on and played
those first three chords and left myself a
voice note, “Create a track that has these
inversions that keep building and building,
and going higher and higher, and has the
really juicy, beautiful chords in between.”
The whole thing was done before I finished
playing the third triad. My goal was that
every note in the song had to have its own
zip code, and it had to sound like a little
church bell that it owns. When you imagine
these things, that’s how you get them
to come into reality.

Parts of “John the Revelator” are reminiscent
of the scene in Crossroads that’s
right before the grand-finale guitar
duel—and then it morphs into “The
Book of the Seven Seals.” Were the two
songs conceived independently?
I came across this version of “John the
Revelator” online. The vocal arrangement
was done by two guys, Paul Caldwell
and Shawn Ivory, and sung by a high
school choir called The Counterpoint
Singers. I contacted the woman that ran
the choir and she sent me a cassette of
the only stereo recording they had. I put
it into Pro Tools, cut it up, and built the
song around it, but it still wasn’t good
enough. The piano was dull, so I hired
10 of L.A.’s finest and they came in and
sight-read this very intricate arrangement.
Then I triple-tracked them, so it’s
like a hundred voices.

But as far as “John the Revelator” and
“The Book of the Seven Seals,” they were
one song. It was a vision. To go from
“John the Revelator,” which is heavy guitars
and tuned-down octave dividers with
these gospel singers—that to me is always
the way gospel should be presented,
heavy, hardcore guitars playing very musical
things—to the second part, with this
extremely white-sounding, Republican,
Midwestern vocal arrangement. That’s
such a contrast.

How did Beverly McClellan get
involved on that track?
I needed somebody to sing “John the
Revelator” and I thought I could do it,
but it wasn’t in my range. When I hosted
an event for NARAS [National Academy
of the Recording Arts and Sciences] with
Sharon Osbourne, I went into the audience
to check out what it sounded like
and this woman, Beverly McClellan, took
the stage and just tore it up. The moment
I heard her sing, I was just stunned dead
in my tracks. I thought, “She’s gotta
sing ‘John the Revelator’ for me.” I was
also thinking, “I don’t know. She doesn’t
know me and she probably thinks I’m
this crazy shredder guitar player,” which
a lot of these people who don’t know
anything about me just think. When I
got backstage, she was there waiting in my
dressing room with her CD and she said,
“I’m a big fan. I know your music and I’d
love to give you this CD.” I said, “Look,
we’ve got to do something.”

New York City native Joe Charupakorn is a guitarist, author, and editor. He has interviewed the world’s biggest guitar icons including Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Yngwie Malmsteen, Carlos Santana, Neal Schon, and Dave Davies, among many others, for Premier Guitar. Additionally, he has written over 20 instructional books for Hal Leonard Corporation. His books are available worldwide and have been translated into many languages. Visit him on the web at joecharupakorn.com.

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